1 INT FREE DRAMA DAY

"Everyone talks about "the magic", but no one knows anything about it. The secret/sacred act by which the story-experience transforms itself into something special defies formula. Spend a lifetime enquiring about its nature; no one will be able to tell you what it is. Though its presence might be obvious, its appearance is unpredictable. One experiences it as a disarming freshness - an enduring "newness" . Whatever it is, you can't cook it up.

"If you want to become the kind of storyteller/filmmaker in whose actions the magic lives, then you must enter into the most intriguing and challenging set of relationships you have ever encountered, relationships in which the essence of the characters intersects and mingles intimately with your own essence, so that you no longer meaningfully distingush these essences or see and hear them as separate.

"Only when your characters' essence (or origins) merges with your own essence (or origins) does the magic, which is ORIGINALITY, become possible."

-Guillaume Marichel

Shakepeare & Co - Paris - 192_

T H E D R A M A O F S C R E E N W R I T I N G

EXPLORING "THE MAGIC"

Thursday 27th January

to Sunday 30th January, 2011

Billy Marshall Stoneking's intensive, 4-day Character workshop is not for the faint hearted but for those with passionate and open minds determined to create memorable and lasting films.

Powerful and believeable characters are essential to the life of every dramatic screen story, whether fictional or factional. The filmmaker's relationship with the characters is the primary relationship informing the entire dramatic enterprise. Writers, writer/directors, producers, editors, cinematographers, designers, actors, sound designers and others can only apply their talents and insights if they are engaged and working WITH the characters.

Discover the secret/sacred odyssey that is MEDIMUISTIC character-driven storytelling. See for yourself why filmmakers and actors have been - and continue to be - influenced and inspired by what occurs during these four, unforgettable days.

COMING to SYDNEY in FEBRUARY

A revolutionary workshop for ACTORS, SCREENWRITERS, DIRECTORS, SCRIPT EDITORS, POETS, JOURNALISTS, FILMMAKERS, ARTISTS, & OTHERS with a passion for STORY and a desire to discover and explore their own, unique inner story worlds and characters.

DRAMA: THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH

I love the poet, Muriel Rukeyser, because she understood that "the world is made of stories, not atoms". You don't have to be a poet to understand this, but it helps. Have a look around. Stories are a force of nature. We didn't evolve from apes; we sprang into life fully formed and thoroughly anxious, embodied by stories.

Story is our essence, the source and expression of every relationship, ambition, dread, birth, death and discovery. Our humanity and inhumanity is rooted in, tangled in the mystery of "how come?" and the suspense of "what next?"

Story is Nature's way of becoming conscious of itself, and as storytellers we work with it to become conscious of ourselves. One writes a story to find out why one is writing it, and in the process discovers that the story is writing us as much as we are writing it.

When Jackson Pollack spoke of a painting as having a life of its own he underscored the central insight of every mediumistic artist. To work as a medium, the screenwriter/filmmaker must forge intimate and emotionally vivid relationships with ALL of the characters necessary for finding the story, and only some of these characters actually exist in the script. In the act or acts of forming and testing these relationships, the screenwriter/filmmaker begins to realise that the story is neither mine nor theirs, but ours.

Billy Marshall Stoneking

follow me on TWITTER @wheresthedrama

the DRAMAaccording to STONEKING

Fear is elemental to every endeavour involving risk. This includes ALL creative endeavours. The management of fear is intrinsic to the creation of anything "new" (i.e.: fresh, surprising, original).

To be is to be anxious. To be creative is to endure the anxiousness – to use it, shape it, transform it, into something that transcends anxiety. - BMS